Early Implementation of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act:Workforce Development and Unemployment Insurance Provisions

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (the Recovery Act) includes nearly $800 billion dollars in federal spending through a number of provisions intended to result in rapid economic stimulus nationwide, particularly in terms of providing jobs, employment services, and retraining for millions of unemployed workers. Programs allocated additional funds in the workforce development area include the Workforce Investment Act (WIA) Adult Program ($494 million), the WIA Dislocated Worker program ($1,184 million), and the Wagner-Peyser Act ($148 million for unrestricted services and $247 million for reemployment services). In the area of unemployment insurance (UI), new outlays were estimated to be roughly $45 billion over 10 years at the time of enactment, with almost all outlays occurring in fiscal years 2009 and 2010. The purpose of this project is to measure progress and challenges in implementing the workforce and UI provisions of the Recovery Act, to highlight new and promising practices, and to provide guidance to the Employment and Training Administration (ETA), the states, and local workforce investment areas. ETA is receiving monthly reports from the states on their expenditures and activities, but it will not receive systematic in-depth information about the implementation of the workforce components of the Recovery Act. This project is intended to help fill this gap by providing feedback to ETA based on document review, on-line surveys, and in-depth field visits to selected states and sub-state areas.